This invention concerns regulating arrivals, taking into account the availability of servers to serve the arrivals. The servers can be literally persons, things, or routes, either fixed or transitory.
Most systems currently in use regulate the rate of arrivals by occasionally varying a time interval between admissions of arrivals, or between initiations of a process generating arrivals. To the extent that systems currently in use take account of recent experience, especially servers' activity, they do so only via average service times and counts, or rates, of traffic past certain points. For a long time, a need has existed to control arrivals in a way directly interrelated to availability of servers. The need continues and is intensified by the development of high-speed communications networks, in which close interrelation of arrivals and availability of servers greatly affects efficiency and performance.
The need is especially apparent in, for example, call origination management systems, wherein arrivals (answering patrons) are generated by dialing one or more telephone lines, and servers are operators who talk to answering patrons. The need also exists to provide substantial improvements in call-routing control methods and systems currently used in some inbound telephone systems, such as Automatic Call Distributors; telephone company switching equipment; and computer-directed telecommunications networks. A further need exists to improve methods and systems currently used in traffic flow control and routing control systems; systems to manage perishable inventory; systems to control routing of repairable items to alternative maintenance facilities; and other systems wherein the objective is to make most efficient use of servers without imposing long waiting times, or non-availability of servers, on arriving customers.